“At one time I used to play cards with Vytautas’s grandfather,” says Šapira approaching, “he’d always beat me. He was smarter than any Jew, that’s what strange. Strange, because he lived foolishly. I kept suggesting we trade, let him be a Jew, and I’ll be a Lithuanian.”
We go past Gražina’s haberdashery, I planned to take a look at the gloves, well, Optica doesn’t concern me, for the time being I get by without glasses — oh, I didn’t stop at the pharmacy on Totorių Street, but what of it: if they had them, women with bags would be running around, all the ministries would be rushing to lay in a supply.
“Vytautas was a smart guy too,” Šapira mumbles, “A poor guy, a smart guy, a martyr. His mother tormented him, that girl tormented him, his own thoughts tormented him. He should have been giving sermons on the mount, but instead he hid from everyone. He brought Vilnius to a stop, but he still didn’t discover anything. He thought he could achieve victory just by being on the defensive. Do you know he hung himself in solitary? Or maybe someone hung him?”
I grab Šapira by the sleeve, but all I do is catch at the air, the old man’s gone, it’s always like he’s dreamt up a bunch of stuff and he always reports some misfortune; don’t tell me it’s true, don’t tell me I won’t need to decide, don’t tell me my knowledge, my testimony, is worthless now. Once more I see Vargalys slowly standing up, straightening out, and looking down with a wooden expression, looking at the mutilated body just as he had looked once before — on that horrible night when I was born.
He found his dismembered mother on our hilclass="underline" he knelt by the mutilated body in the exact same way, then in the exact same way he stood up and straightened out, in the exact same way he glanced downwards with a wooden expression — I didn’t see it the first time, but I saw the second. On that day in forty-four when the Russians came back his mother went completely crazy, she rushed to go to battle; none of you men have balls, she would scream, none of you have balls, I’m the only one who’s a real man, then she started saying she was Lithuania itself and she was standing to battle immediately; in the evening she secretly escaped from the family’s care and stood to that battle, all alone against the entire Russian army; apparently she really felt she was Lithuania itself. Vasilis saw that battle of hers, as always, he stood there aloof and watched: she met the first Russian soldiers and attacked them like a she-wolf; they were provisioners, they didn’t even carry automatics, and their hands were full, they were dragging soap, as much as they could carry; they had come across a warehouse the Germans had abandoned and were whistling happily because they’d finally gotten some soap, they thought they’d finally wash up like human beings, all they were dreaming about was a sauna, and suddenly they met a she-wolf. There were maybe six of them, but Vargalys’s mother scattered them in all directions, kicked them, trampled them, tore their faces with her nails, she even forgot her jujitsu mastery, but the Russians slowly came to their senses — stunned, humiliated, with bloody, harrowed faces; a few more emerged from the forest, and that was it for Vargalys’s mother: the soldiers chopped her up with shovels, they didn’t even have any other weapons, they didn’t just kill her, but chopped her to bits; blinded by an inhuman anger, they chopped at her brutally and for a long time. Vasilis said that pieces of her body were strewn everywhere, and they kept chopping until they tired. Only then did they come to their senses: they got horrified themselves, or maybe they only just then realized they were mutilating a woman; they ran off, some even crossing themselves, scattering pieces of soap. All of that happened on our nameless hill. Sometimes it seems to me that all of my childhood happened on that bare hill. Gediminas Hill looms over Vilnius, but nothing’s happened on it for a long time now, the exhausted castle pokes out like some worthless addition to the city; inside the knights’ armor, Lithuanian swords, and silver ornaments are sleeping, they’re sleeping and will sleep through the ages, and we’re dozing right alongside; a slight mist covers the castle, like an aged coquette’s veil; I was inside only once, with Gedka and Vargalys, this alcoholic artist worked there as the museum’s night watchman, we partied all night long in the middle of all that armor, those cannons and swords, but the spirit of the old Grand Dukes didn’t wake up, anyway: it couldn’t even manage to get insulted; enough about the castle, on the other side of the street is the corner of miracles, a bit of paradise, the kingdom of dreams, on the other side of the street is — the dollar store. I simply can’t believe a world like that even exists, that’s the way I’d feel when Martis would listen to that radio from the other side: I’d hear people’s voices, they would utter completely understandable words, but as soon as I’d try to imagine them sitting in some room, to imagine that there are streets outside their window, that trees grow there too, and cars zoom around — it would never work. They’re like Martians to me. Apparently they exist, but they don’t, they’re imaginary, like this Martian store, Ali Baba’s cave: you say, Open Sesame, and like hell it’ll open; they just yell — a foreign passport and dollars! Only Martians come here; once I lived in the swamp, from there even Vilnius looked like a Mars of some sort, but now I’m a bit Martian myself, when I go back home, that’s just how everyone looks at me. But after all, I could have been like them, if not for Vasilis, the great phantom Vasilis, my teacher and creator. He lit a spark in me that I didn’t have when I was born, turned me into a human and a woman, opened up a world for me that I didn’t even suspect existed; all I knew was our village life, it seemed there couldn’t be any other. You know, it really is comfortable not to know anything: when you don’t know anything, you don’t want anything either, the wheel of life turns evenly and smoothly, nothing changes, nothing worries you; it really is awful to find out you can live some other way, that knowledge is devastating, but Vasilis managed to patiently nurse my spirit, so I went out into the world prepared to oppose it fearlessly.
Vasilis loved and respected all forms of life, be it ants or wolves. Once I saw a louse crawling through the hair on his chest, I wanted to smash it, but he didn’t let me: it’s God’s creation too, he said, it’s needed too, it’s needed under God’s canopy, honor every living thing, this louse matters just as much as a star, or Gediminas Castle, and you don’t, after all, put out stars or wreck Gediminas Castle; lice, tigers, goats, and cats live among people too — and it’s forbidden to destroy a single one, all of them are equally important, a louse could still turn into a tiger, or a cat into a flea, what matters most is to want something, to want something very, very, badly. Then he kept telling me about Vilnius, that city would appear in my dreams as a land of miracles, where people, tigers, cats, fleas, and elephants live together, all of them get along, socialize, turn into one another, and there’s music playing everywhere, the towers stretch to the sky, plants of paradise you’ve never seen before sway in the breeze; I wonder who this babe is — she’s sewed herself a poncho out of Scottish plaid and walks around that way — a mouse, a cow, or maybe a magpie? I found the real Vilnius to be different, completely different, but no less amazing; it seems to me that Vilnius enters my body like a man, my eternal man, who will give me sons; God almighty, I should have had children, I desperately needed to have children, a lot of children — they could have had so many fathers. I keep remembering Gediminas, his scholarly language, that music of his that made my teeth hurt; I probably loved him, but I loved Tedis too, and Martis; Lord knows, one heart is not enough for me, I should have been born with a couple of them; I didn’t love Vargalys, he’s not a creature of this earth, I was afraid of him, but at the same time I respected him, maybe respect and fear are inseparable things. His child, a son of course, fell out of me himself, committed suicide before he was born, I’m afraid to even think of what he would have been like, what marks of the Vargalyses he’d carry, that accursed family, who, according to Vasilis, was perhaps destined to save Lithuania: maybe it was because of his family’s importance that Vargalys wanted children so badly, after all, he left his wife because she was infertile. I know Irena quite well, occasionally we call each other, go out somewhere to sit; I don’t visit her at home, she lives too luxuriously, her new husband is a black marketeer — a Volvo, carved furniture, and a Japanese television — the realization of the Soviet man’s dreams. I don’t know what it was that tied me to Vargalys — huge and miserable, unhappy and terrible; no, I didn’t love him, not even in the beginning, and certainly not later, when that business with Lolita started, so that’s why I suddenly feel so free now. If Šapira’s right. .